Review launched after Hells Angel hired by City of Vancouver

Ronaldo Lising, a Vancouver member of the Hells Angels, is led into the Main Street police station by a member after police scooped up a number of members of the motorcycle gang in 1998.Ward Perrin
/ Vancouver Sun Files

VANCOUVER -- The City of Vancouver is reviewing its hiring practices after news broke that a notorious member of the East End Hells Angels was hired to collect garbage, but is stopping short of requiring routine criminal records checks on all employees.

Ronaldo Lising, 51, has been convicted of drugs, weapons and assault offences, and in 2005 he was nabbed during a massive investigation that saw police raid Hells Angels clubhouses in Kelowna and Vancouver. In May of last year he was granted day parole on an 11-year, nine-month sentence — despite admitting to the parole board that he was still a full-patch member.

He was hired as a seasonal trash collector in May without a criminal record check, according to city manager Penny Ballem.

He “is essentially a labourer with no contact, obviously, with children or vulnerable people at risk or any access to any inventory, financial records, anything,” Ballem told a Vancouver radio station.

“They are essentially working on garbage collection. So it’s not necessary to do a criminal records check.”

Ballem said city staff are now looking into what kinds of questions they can ask a potential employee.

When asking for parole Lising told the board that he would “resign from the Hells Angels as soon as [he] could do so in a manner acceptable to the club.” Yet last November, the Parole Board of Canada noted that Lising was still a full-patch member, but decided to continue his day parole.

“Your membership in the Hells Angels continues to be a concern, but there is no indication that you have breached your special conditions to avoid criminals and gang members and to curtail your interaction with said group,” the Nov. 6 ruling says.

He is still prohibited from associating with any Hells Angels or hang-arounds and prospects in the biker gang program. He can’t “wear or display his Hells Angels colours or any insignia indicating membership in or support for Hells Angels motorcycle clubs,” the parole board ruling says.

Nor can he attend clubhouses or Hells Angels events or enter any drinking establishment.

B.C.’s human rights code does not allow employers to discriminate against people with criminal records unless the employer can prove the discrimination is justified.

So, for example, an employer is justified in not hiring a sex offender as a custodian at a school or for not hiring someone convicted of fraud to work in a bank.

“Criminal or summary conviction is a protected ground under only the area of employment,” said Srdjan Rajbah, of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

“So you can refuse to rent to someone because they have a criminal conviction, you can refuse to offer services to someone if they have a criminal conviction. All the other grounds, you’re allowed to discriminate on the basis of that, except employment.”

Rajbah said it is routine for municipal or provincial governments to do criminal records checks on potential employees. But unless they can find a justifiable reason, the information can’t be used against a job applicant.

Human rights lawyer Elizabeth Reid said the onus on an employer to determine whether a person’s conviction is related to the job they are applying for is not small.

“They can’t make assumptions about this — they have to examine the facts very carefully,” she said.

So the nature of the conviction must be weighed against what duties the job entails, whether the applicant will be interacting with a vulnerable population, and how closely the person will be supervised, among other things. As well, the time lapse since the conviction and the age of the applicant at the time of the charge must also be considered.

As a result, Reid said some employers, including the city, may not find it worthwhile to do an exhaustive check. She said it would be an open question whether an employer has a justifiable requirement to ensure garbage collectors don’t have criminal convictions.

“(Employers) can ask for the criminal record check. But if they say ‘if anything turns up on the criminal record check, you’re out,’ then that would be discriminatory,” she said.

“My general advice to employers is, unless you’re in some kind of sensitive position, you may not want to ask those questions because as soon as you ask the questions, you might be facing a discrimination complaint.”

Reid also noted Canada has a general principal of recognizing that once someone has served time in prison, they have paid their debt to society and should be able to resume their lives.

A spokesman for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents sanitation workers in Vancouver, declined to comment on the Lising case.

“If the city is going to change its hiring practices, then that’s a discussion that would obviously have to take place with the union with whatever other internal procedures the city has to go through,” said Clay Suddaby.

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